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Branding. Done.
Values in Recruitment with Wayne Brophy
In this episode, we dive into the critical role of values in both the company culture of CAST UK and its recruitment process. Wayne Brophy, founder of the recruitment agency, CAST UK, shares how personal values and a disciplined routine have played a pivotal role in his entrepreneurial journey. This episode is packed with Wayne's career insights, starting with a business degree, progressing through logistics at DHL, and finally reaching the position of Area Manager with Aldi, highlighting the significance of diverse experiences and perspectives.
Listen in as Wayne takes us through the thrilling roller coaster of establishing his venture, CAST UK. He candidly shares how he navigated through the initial risks, the involved capital, and his first business idea of importing furniture. Over time, he acknowledges the power of self-belief, continuous learning, and the indispensable help of others that has led to the flourishing of his business. Get the inside scoop on the core values of CAST UK: reliability, dependability, and the principle of under-promising and over-delivering that are the bedrock of its operations.
In the latter part of our conversation, we dive into the critical role of values in both the company culture of CAST UK and its recruitment process. Wayne enlightens us on how understanding a customer's values is instrumental in building long-lasting relationships. Finally, we touch upon the importance of shared values with clients, the essence of effort, and walking the extra mile. Tune in for an engaging discussion on the pivotal role of values in achieving your business goals, as told through the inspiring journey of Wayne Brophy.
Hi, I'm your host, Dave O'Hernes, and this is Branding Done. We're here to rid the world of bad design and poor communication through powerful branding. Each episode, we'll be speaking to different people from different backgrounds to hear their stories and experiences and uncover what a brand truly is. Today we've got Wayne Brophy, founder of Cast UK. Cast UK Recruitment Company cover a number of different areas, currently expanding into the USA as well, and work with the likes of NHS and BNM. So let's hear from Wayne and find out what impact values have on recruitment. Hey, Wayne, good to see you. Thanks for joining us as well. It's been a little while since we've caught up, isn't it? But we've known each other for quite a long time. Can you guess how many years, maybe?
Wayne Brophy:Well, hi, dave, are you alright? It's about 15, 15, 16 years or something like that. It's got to be on for that sort of weather time, isn't it?
David O'Hearns:Yeah, you're a lucky guy knowing me for that long.
Wayne Brophy:Time for eyes will be our fun. You know what I mean.
David O'Hearns:Yeah, well, exactly. So, yeah, you joined us. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about personal values what shapes people behind companies, and also the values within their own company and how the personal values might impact that, how values that you've determined for your own company might impact the day-to-day workings and stuff like that. Before we dive into some of that and you give us a bit of background as to why you set up the cast and what you were looking to achieve back in the day, I was having a quick glance around your LinkedIn profile and posts and stuff like that. When I noticed last night you've posted that Sunday is quite. It sounded quite religious the fact that you get yourself really organised and ready for the week ahead, which I like the sound a bit. I can imagine some people are too busy watching Netflix or something, so that tells you something about yourself. So do you want to touch on that a bit and then open up into why cast and what difference do you want it to make?
Wayne Brophy:Yes, it's interesting, I got some stick with that post. I think most people don't necessarily prep for the week ahead on a Sunday evening. They kind of like to spend time with the family and weekend is weekend and precious time. But I don't know, for me I guess I'm just condition that way. So for me, work's an important part of my life, it's an important part of my make-up and who I am, and I don't know. I've always done it, I've always done it. So probably always I'm going to do it.
Wayne Brophy:Sunday for me is just a way just to get ahead. I always spend an hour or two just prepping for the week, writing down my notes, writing down my plan, clearing emails, just kind of getting myself set. So I'm not coming into not being ready for Monday, if that makes sense. So yeah, it's just the thing. It's the thing if I don't do, I kind of go into Monday and I feel like I'm behind. Even if I come in early on a Monday, I'm behind if I'm not prepped on a Sunday, because obviously you can't prep every single week. So yeah, so it was an interesting debate. I'll talk to somebody else. I put that post on LinkedIn last night and yeah, it was quite an interesting post and I got a bit of a stick about weekend should be family time and not work and switch off. But that'd be quite alien to me.
David O'Hearns:It's a funny thing, isn't it? I think you can post anything on any platform LinkedIn as well and people will have an opinion, and that's again part of what we'll talk about today. But there is that phrase in there. They can get it right fail to prepare, prepare to fail. So there is an element of that. So, as and when you choose to do it, you might have done it when your kids were out in the cinema or something like that and watching a film or so. They didn't know you weren't in the room, so it might not have been that.
Wayne Brophy:So I've got two teenage kids, I mean on a Sunday afternoon, one of them is glued to Netflix on the phone, the other one's glued to his Xbox. So I could probably break dancing the house and I wouldn't realize.
David O'Hearns:So, hey, there's something we'll have to take off the podcast.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, exactly.
David O'Hearns:So yeah, give us a little bit of background as to you know cast itself and what made you even entertain setting up a business.
Wayne Brophy:Good question. So I never kind of intended to set me on business up. It was never on the radar. I don't add a pretty typical sort of background. That did a business degree back at the time when you did the other milk rounds. So we had different businesses current to university presented the students and one of those was a company which we know now is DHL, when at the time it was called Excel. When I was there they were looking for people to join the graduate program. I applied for it. I was very fortunate to get onto that program and I finished my business degree and went into logistics and I did that for a few years and, yeah, very good. I got to try different departments, which was excellent. However, I did leave.
Wayne Brophy:Then I went to work for Aldi, the German supermarket, so it was one of the one of the first employees in the UK. I was an area manager for them. I looked after the South Wales stores four or five stores in South Wales and I'll be honest with you, I joined it purely for the money, because I was a graduate living in London working for Excel and I was pretty much double my salary. So it was a bit of a no brainer for me. But I loved Aldi. I thought it was excellent, great grounding. Any young people or graduates thinking about looking at the careers today definitely join Aldi. I thought it was a superb business. Anyway, I did that and then I went back to London and I moved back to London, which I met my new wife, who you know, kerry and I went back and joined back to Excel and did logistics again. So that was all great. My kind of career was kind of mapped out on you. I'm still quite young. I was one of the youngest general managers in the whole of the Excel network, which is great. I was doing well, doing well in my career.
Wayne Brophy:But I wanted to move back up north and it's funny things happen. I went on a stag do and they'll add a met work for a company called Michael Page, which is a big recruiter, as you may or may not know, and I was saying to him look, I'm looking at moving back to Manchester. I'm not sure there's anything with an Excel in the north. It's been London centric, what do you think? And he said, well, why do you think about recruitment? So I decided in my wisdom that I'd go and join Michael Page. When I met him off at a job which was excellent and they were good. I want to enjoy Michael Page.
Wayne Brophy:But then I hated recruitment. I didn't like it. I didn't like the environment. They want to do it and I think they only did it for about six months and you probably won't find that anywhere on any CV or anything, because it was literally. I was there for such a shop here at the time and every day I was the worst employee ever. I went in with a massive chip on my shoulder. I went in with real attitude, didn't like being there. It wasn't the environment for me, and one day I was literally walking and just said look, it's not for me, I'm leaving. I'm going to go back into industry, go back into Excel or go back into logistics or retail, and I kind of left it. I've nothing to go to and that's like I think. So what do I want to do? And it is crazy.
Wayne Brophy:I went to a few interviews got off at a job at Boots, got off at a job at Bradford and Bingley. I've offered different types of different types of jobs I think Wincanton was one of them as well but none of them kind of felt right and I was kind of sat there for well, do you know what, Even though I the chip was on my shoulder with the Michael page, I was quite good at the job. I was quite good with people. I was quite good with getting people on side and working with me. I'm quite good at business development. And I thought you know what Very, very, very, very arrogant of myself and I was only like 26 or 27. I thought I could do a better job. So I thought I could do better than a probably the biggest global recruitment business on the planet. I just thought I could do better than them and crazy things to think about. So I did that.
Wayne Brophy:And one of the jobs within DHL or Excel was onboarding accounts and working with new business and writing business plans and putting a business case forward to the board, whether we on board or not. So I kind of treated the whole setting your own business up as I would do on board a new client within Excel. So I went away, wrote a business plan, wrote a training plan, did all the back office ops things and Kind of sell me on business as much as a project to see if I couldn't, I could do that. I miss his thoughts absolutely. Bonkers, she's like. Why set up a recruitment business when you've told me every day for five or six Months you hate it? But but I did and I set set one up. Within a month was setting up a employer first employee Set up in my home turn and where I lived, at a town which is Rochester, I think. Within a three or four months after that I moved to Manchester and 18 and a half years later I'm kind of kind of still doing it and it's a crazy story really, because I've set up a recruitment business and it's been.
Wayne Brophy:It's been good. We've had lots of challenges on the way. It's been lots of fun. I've had lots of ups and lots of downs. A lot of it is just figuring out along the way. I've never had any formal training and I know I worked for Michael Page for a lot, for a small bit of time. But when I say I was a difficult employee, I was the person who didn't listen, didn't want to be there. I would. It just wasn't a good place for me personally. But I look back on it and I think I didn't go to Michael page. I never be sat in out doing my own things.
David O'Hearns:So so maybe you know it's fate, I guess exactly, and sometimes you know people create a business because they're the technician. So you know, I run my agency because I was a designer, and then you become good at design people like what you do and then suddenly you're running an agency and it's become the skill that you had into a business where Other, in other instances, like you've kind of described, you've had the taste of something but you just believe that you could do it better. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs that start a business that don't do the thing they do. They see the opportunity that they think they can maybe improve something or look at it in a different way.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, and I think at the time as well, I mean again, not I don't want to send our rings, I'm not at all. That's not my makeup. I think I was. I back myself to do a good job. I think that was the main thing. I absolutely back myself. I thought, well, I think I could do, I make something of this. I also at the time was looking at other opportunities as well. So I think I did a bit of a double in property development. I realized I was awful at that. I mean which I kind of a bank of nailing straight. So that's just not my my thing With my kind of logistics background.
Wayne Brophy:I was looking at importing furniture and just the risk and the capital outweighed by order furniture I'm gonna buy furniture from the far east and kind of import that. It just didn't make commercial sense. But whenever whatever business I looked at, the recruitment space kind of made sense. It was recruited in the market and new, which was logistics and supply chain. I knew that Impeccably. I guess I was credible in that space. My customers understood me, so I thought I could have a real, real good go of it.
Wayne Brophy:The bit I didn't understand was probably recruitment as a as a business but I thought really how difficult that could that be. Could I figure that out? And look, don't get me wrong, if there's a mistake to be made in running a recruitment business, I have made it. Yeah, I've made. I've made every possible mistake and looking back on that I'm surprised I've got a successful business, because I think I think not been experiencing the market you go into is just not smart. But hey, I figured out along the way I've had good advice that good people around me. I've leaned on good people and I guess this is where I am today 18 years on.
David O'Hearns:Yes, I've said there, isn't they? So just some of the stuff you've said there and you know we're talking about values today. You know I often say that people don't really Get it one day and decided to write their own values down on a pad to say, you know, what do I stand for as a person? But just for some of the stuff that we've spoke about so far, what would be some of your own values be? What do you think kind of rises to the top that Wayne stands for as a person?
Wayne Brophy:So it probably goes back to how we name the company. So the bit loyalty was miss. Why is it called like cast cash UK? And I guess when we think about the name, I always saying I've discussed it with my wife, right, I said okay, I want something that's reliable, dependable, you know pretty. So we say you're gonna do something, you're gonna do it, you know it's. You know managing people's expectations. I said, under promise over deliver that type of stuff. You know, I think I'm that sort of Honest sort of guy. If I'm gonna say I'm gonna do something for you, I will absolutely do it. And I wanted that to be running through our business. When we're talking about how to name a company, what potential names of the company, we discussed that and the whole cast camp kind of come about as if you cast things, something, you forging it and I and you know it's very reliable, dependable, it's gonna be there. I also love the connotation of casting your net, like throwing it out, so that's having to kind of name the business.
Wayne Brophy:So you come back to the values. As me as a person, you know it's about some of the things I have wrote down over the years and you probably know this because you helped them with. There's some point in my journey, you know we wrote down things like okay, he's not go, okay, we got the extra mile. You know we don't just talk the talk, we walk the walk. You know we're striving for better, we're never standing still and I guess one of my personal favorites is, you know, confident, never arrogant, personable, yet professional. You know, and I think those four things for me Kind of some of my own personal values and what I see. You know I believe I've got in myself, but I look across my business and the people we employ. People have worked here either currently or previously and I think they run through everybody. You know there there are go to whenever we look to do anything in the business. It's our own value set.
David O'Hearns:It sounds like you say that you, even your own values, have kind of shaped the values of the organization.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, I think, I think. I think that's. I think if you run a small business and we are a small business but we employ 30 people, so we're not like some major faceless corporation, we're a small organization, right, and I think, as the boss of the business, your values do run for the business and, and I think that's, I think it's important, I think that's right as well. You know, I think it's, it's your kind of. I don't know if you're an animal of the door, so it's. What does that stand for? You know what does the badge on the shirt kind of symbolize? You know what you all about and I think you, the values are important. To get people to want to work for your business, they have to be aligned. Their personal values have to go on to your values, otherwise it's never gonna work anyway, in my opinion.
David O'Hearns:Yeah, well, I mean, we'll run exercises, tease values out of companies and one approach that we take is to say what are the things that get you angry, frustrated, and or you, because if you can go down that path and get on your soapbox is highly likely that the opposite of that will be the value that you actually stand for. So, on that, what, what are the types of things that might get you a bit upset or angry, and stuff like that frustrate you in life.
Wayne Brophy:I think man United losing tends to wind up a little bit Angry for a few years. Yeah, I've been angry. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, the things in work is effort I mean effort is is absolutely everything right. And if someone doesn't know how to do something or they make mistakes, that's kind of cool, right. If they don't know how to do something, that's fine. The learning journey is great and someone being on that learning journey is is fun and enjoyable. If someone makes mistake, that's fine as well. If someone doesn't put effort in, it drives me absolutely insane. It's like, just try, just try, put effort in, apply yourself. So that's sort of a really, really, really, really makes me angry. I think also as well.
Wayne Brophy:People continually and I just I don't want to contradict myself here. I want to explain what I'm going to vote. So people make mistakes is fine. People who make the same mistake repeatedly, over and over and over again, because they don't listen and they don't improve that's also quite annoying. So making mistakes is fine. Making mistakes again is kind of fine. But if you're making it after 10 times, it's like why are you not learning from that? I think that's quite annoying as well. So there are a couple of things. You know. Other things is like tarniness. People are just like that's not is quite annoying, but that's a personal thing.
David O'Hearns:Paul Popper. Paul Popper was annoying, wasn't he? Oh?
Wayne Brophy:God, yeah, yeah, exactly Paul Popper kind of yeah, he's really, really annoying. He's massively lazy, he just doesn't try, he's just oh so difficult to watch as a fan.
David O'Hearns:Alex Ferguson got rid of him, I think, when he was younger, and then the club brought him back once Alex Ferguson had disappeared. But for me that plays a big part in values and recruitment is getting people on board, that you want a diversity and different people, different characters and stuff like that, but you want people that have a similar value set because then it'll create a stronger culture. Is that what you find as well when you're obviously being asked to recruit for other companies, that you need to be able to do that? You need to kind of understand the individual, what they want, but also what the company's looking for, and try and get that match as well as just a skill set.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, and there's a reason why. You know the reason why we've been trading 18 years. You know we've got we're very, very lucky to have a, you know, a reasonably large customer base, but a customer base that trusts us time and time and time and time again. And we have a great repeat business with clients, which is which is excellent. But these clients come back and work with us, not because we can find them talent, but we find them talent that are right for their business.
Wayne Brophy:And when you first start working with a customer, that is really hard because you don't know that customer, you don't know the personality, you don't know the culture set, you don't know the values set, you don't really know what. You know the badge on the shirt, I call it. You know you don't know that. But after you've recruited from a several times, you've met them several times, you really you know you brought, you brought them to barriers. Then you do. And then finding people is one thing, but finding people who are, who share the same values set, makes that person or those people stick longer with the business. They don't get wrong Not saying we do that 100% of the time, but sometimes the mistakes make it all on the way and people don't work out, but more often than not they do, and I've and I've customers value that as well. So, yeah, you know that's the sort of thing we would.
Wayne Brophy:We try to do with our customers because it matters to us. You know, one of the things that we talk a lot in our business is building rewarding relationships and building long term relationships. Well, that's just not. We don't get that lip service.
Wayne Brophy:We talk about that because we really really mean it, you know, and we work really hard to build those long term relationships with people because we want to do that and we want them to do that with us, because the thing that is smart to do it, but it's the right thing to do as well. And that comes down to sorry, it comes down to our kind of core values. You know we want to go to XMR with people. You know, go back to the name. You know we want to say we're going to do something, we're going to be dependable, we're going to be reliable, we're going to sort this out for you. You know, if we were in for it to do one deal or one piece of work and then never work with them again, we kind of go against our value set as a business and what we are believing.
David O'Hearns:Yeah, and you probably wouldn't help people as much, would you be so hard, hot, because you're trying to help them build a team ultimately as well. Going back to football, I know both of us love. You know you need 11 people on a pitch that are going to work in harmony. You need more than that to be fair, but it only takes one individual to not have the right mindset and not track back or chase, or have the will to win. It ruins the team, doesn't? It ruins the culture. So it makes your role in the world and your team's role in the world vital to your clients, doesn't it really?
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I agree.
David O'Hearns:And you're dealing with humans at the end of the day as well. You know that in itself is difficult. You know people can change slightly day to day or something can happen in the personal life that affects the opportunity as a role.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, and also I mean you're absolutely right, we're dealing with human beings, we're dealing with people, and it's not just it's not just one way to process this, it's also from a candidate's point of view. A candidate wants to join a business that's aligned to their values and especially in today's world I mean the market for the last couple of years has been it's been so difficult to find top talent that candidates have held the cards, you know, and held the control on that. So they are really pushing businesses to say what is your value set? What does your brand stand for? Is this the right place for me? Is this going to give me the right long-term opportunities? Am I going to be happier?
Wayne Brophy:You know, because you spend a lot of time at work. You see your work colleagues more than your family more often than not. So you have to get it right from both parties. So it's not just about the business writing some faceless values there and not sticking to them. You have to kind of stick to it, in my opinion, today to attract the best talent around, because that best talent will be looking for businesses that align with them.
David O'Hearns:Completely, and I've often said, as the world evolved and businesses evolved, you know, obviously, as you know, we get involved in writing, like a purpose and values and all the word behind a good brand, and candidates and people want to know what a company ultimately stands for. It's OK writing the words, but you actually need to live and breathe them as well. Whereas you go back 20 years ago, you couldn't find out anything about a company. Really. You'd find a job opportunity, apply, turn up to the offices, have an interview beside there and then if you wanted a job, whereas now you can go and do research about the whole company, find out about the culture. Look on Glassdoor you can look at anywhere. In fact, you can already paint a picture, can't it, before you even engage with it. And then you're starting to have expectations of what you want to get out of it.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, exactly, exactly that.
David O'Hearns:It's really important. Again, it comes down to values and it's a shared thing. We all want high performing teams and people with the right mindset and stuff like that, but that makes it even more difficult to compete, doesn't it? I guess, in that space, to make sure that you're trying to get the best talent possible for your own team, yeah, I mean recruiting for ourselves.
Wayne Brophy:It's an interesting because clearly we recruit for our own business. So whenever we're interviewing people we always interview on a panel basis, so several people would meet that individual to either first stage or second stage. And we do that for a reason one because I think it's good, from the candidate experience, to meet lots of different people in our business, to get a flavor of different types of people and culture we have in our organization and also to see whether we consist in the same message. But also the flip side of that is we will all then come together and we'll give our opinions whether we think that person meets our values set and we think that person is going to be a success in the business. But in mind, a lot of people we recruit have never done recruiting before, so they've never got any experience. So us turning around to them to give us evidence that they can do this job is a non-star, because most have never done it before.
Wayne Brophy:So what we're actually looking for really is we're looking for behaviors which we may describe as values here. So have they got the right work ethic? Are they organized? Are they customer centric? Did they react quick? Have they got high attention to detail? Have they got high influence in skills? Can they have evidence of this type of stuff? That's the sort of things we're interested in and we're talking to them about and we'll ask them questions around not necessarily very direct questions about that, but we'll ask different questions to draw that out at the individual and then we'll come back down as a team and we'll discuss it, because we're actually buying the personality, behaviors and values set of that individual. The rest we can give them, we will train them, we'll work with them, but we have to start off right, and that starting off right is have they got the right values set to that? We believe that match ours.
David O'Hearns:Yeah, it's an attitude thing, isn't it? At the end of the day. In most cases, obviously, we'll recruit for ourselves and some of our roles, like a designer role, the portfolio can say something quite quickly whether it's well designed or not. So we can look at that and you can actually make quite quick decisions on whether you think the capability is there.
David O'Hearns:After that, if you're looking at, thinking there's something there, it then, comes out to whether you believe you can train that individual to become a better designer, which will mean that they're going to have to have some feedback and some negative feedback at time to help them improve, because learning skills takes a while to achieve, to get to a certain standard.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah and again I'll go back to the interview process to work for our business, to get a position in our business. This is our standard process. The first stage would be a chat similar to what we're having now today. It's dead relaxed, one VCV, find out some more about yourself, and that's even done by video or in person, whatever. But the second stage is a bit more involved.
Wayne Brophy:So we ask them to do a personality profile and we use one of the providers we use. It's very, very detailed. I think there's 21 or 24 different personality traits that it looks like and it gives you quite a detailed report on that individual. So I think there's about 200, 250 questions to answer. It's quite a time-consuming activity. It takes at least 35, 40 minutes for that individual to do so straight away. Yes, we're interested in the information that comes back on the report, but what we're also interested in is how quickly they do it. Are they receiving that and getting it done straight away? Are they doing it 10 minutes before they walk for the door? Because for me that shows what sort of individual they are, how organized they are, how much they want it against that behavioral thing. So yeah, we get the report and that'll tell us what have they got good social skills, influencing skills, whatever that is.
Wayne Brophy:But then one of the other things we ask them to prepare is asking them to do a presentation. So, again, the first thing we ask them to do with coming in is a presentation. This subject is usually around tell us something that is not on your CV that we might find of interest. So it's really wide, suitably vague and it's about just, we're not actually bothered about what's on that presentation. What we're actually bothered about is how much effort you're putting. So people at Rockup and are there any effort? You can see they've done it in the last five minutes you're thinking how much effort are they really going to apply for one of our clients If they can't be bothered to apply effort for their own career today? Are they really going to go the extra mile, which is one of our values? Are they going to go the extra mile for one of our clients? So these are the sort of things we will talk about internally.
Wayne Brophy:We then ask we get them to do a business simulation exercise and that's all about attention to detail. So it's just some better data. We look at it and we add some really basic questions. A really simple exercise, but it's just about attention to detail and, again, if people haven't got attention to detail, they're always going to struggle in our world. And then we'll run through using the report, we'll run through an interview and we'll ask them certain questions around their behaviors and the value set. But what that does, it gives a really good picture of whether, because anyone can talk the talk or can they walk the walk, which, again, we see one of the values that we have as a company.
Wayne Brophy:It's not about talking the talk, it's about walking the walk, and that walk in the walk is well, you said that you really organized, but your presentation wasn't. It says that you're proactive and you're willing to go the extra mile for your clients. You've told me the world to examples of that, but when I ask you to do it for us, you've not evidenced that. So that's one of the things that we do. I think it's about trying for us to understand and, again, it's not always right. We've had employees that we've employed and the presentation wasn't great and they probably did it at the last minute and it turned out to be absolute superstars and vice versa. So I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, because it isn't, and recruiting isn't really hard. But just so you understand my mindset and the sort of things I look for for people coming into our business and what I believe makes a success.
David O'Hearns:The process you've just mentioned there clearly has been formulated over a number of years. I like the fact that all of the values that you mentioned earlier that the business hold closely, and actually 18 years ago kind of a good few of them derived from yourself, because you're actually playing them out in that recruitment process? How often do you see that? Do you have to educate clients about that more than you'd like to, or do you think people are getting a bit more savvy about the fact that that's a good way of recruiting people?
Wayne Brophy:I mean, I don't think we're that much different than most businesses and I just think we thought about it more because this is our world, this is what we do. We write these down. Whenever we get lost in any decision-making, we do it. We come back to our values because the value is the reason why we have the values, because it points in the right direction. So I just think we think about it more because it really matters to us as a business and we put our credence on it. I think our clients are exactly the same, but sometimes I haven't thought about it as much.
Wayne Brophy:But when you ask the question just like we're back to your example when you're drawing these up with your clients doing an EVP or something, you might not know what you're actually after. But if you ask them what they're not after, they'll be able to tell you and then by elimination you reverse that out and it's where the same. So we're exactly the same. But yeah, that's because we know what we're doing in terms of our jobs and to ask the right questions and stuff and tease that sort of information out of clients. But going back to ourselves, that's why we do it. We're probably just a bit more thought of it through.
Wayne Brophy:I guess that's why we've got our values there and we've got them on the wall. We live and breathe our values. Our own promotion criteria if anyone to get promoted is obviously you've got to be good at your job and demonstrate your ability to do the next level up when you get promoted. But the biggest criteria for anyone getting promoted is do the live and breathe our values and we've had loads of examples where someone might be doing a job today they're about to demonstrate they've got the ability to do the next level up, but we wouldn't promote them if they weren't living and breathing our values. And we'll explain why and if you understand that and then we'll come back and work on it.
David O'Hearns:Now I've really got to hear values and the importance of having them written down and not just written down, but having them written down in the first instance and them being celebrated throughout the whole of the business. Say, you're having an opinion-based organization where a manager or a director or someone or an owner has an opinion and someone else feels like you're just getting moaned at, whereas if you're saying, I'm not sure about that, you could have done it better because of this value, we want to celebrate this value more. That becomes an open, honest conversation about something that you collectively agreed when you were recruited as well. So it drives the business forward, doesn't it? And people forward, rather than just I'm not sure I like the way you're doing that.
Wayne Brophy:That's just an opinion.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, exactly, it's about evidence there and putting some context to it, whether that's internally or externally or whatever. And again, whenever we're working externally with our clients and candidates, our values set that we hold today, we apply that to them. So we expect people to meet us halfway, as I describe it. So if we said we're going to do something in a client's, we expect people to do that. We expect to do the right thing by people and we will do the right thing by people, but we expect our clients and candidates to do the right thing by ourselves as well. So I think a lot of the values that we have as a company, I think they should be, and are, shared with the clients that we want to work with. And that's probably why, when I think back of it again, touch will. We've had a very successful business over 18 years and hopefully another 18 years will continue.
Wayne Brophy:But it's about being clear on who we are and what we stand for, and I think our clients respect that and that's why they want to work with us and want to align with us, and we respect their values as well and we want to work with good people, we want to work with good businesses and we want to do the best possible job we possibly ever can do and sometimes, you know, I again I say to our own team you know our best source of improvement comes from asking our clients help me do better.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, because we want that knowledge and our clients are excellent. Our clients are willing to feed that back and you know most. You know we've got clients today. That's some of the innovation we've got in our business and tech we use and ideas we've got. I come on the back of asking our clients we want to do better for you. What do you think we can improve? And do some great ideas. So I think values are massively important, but sharing them with your clients and what you stand for, I think is equally important as well.
David O'Hearns:It drives you forward, doesn't it? Ultimately, what you've discussed today, what would make you most happy if you saw someone expressing a particular value? Which one, would you say, gets you in the right place as well? You think, yes, that's the one that I have, if any value. Let's say, you are going to hand that value down to someone younger, implementing somebody ever in your team or family member, which is the value that you'd say take this one away. Have all the ones that I stand for. This is the one that I'd want you to definitely take on board.
Wayne Brophy:Do you want to say really, really, really good question, right? And I'm going to cheat and say I've got two and I'll explain the two, right, so I guess in well, they've both got a handy hand, but one of them is I describe as going the extra mile. So what are you doing different today, or above what people expect of you? So are you going the extra mile? Are you going the extra mile with your candidates, your clients, your colleagues, your suppliers? What are you doing today to go over the both? And I think that's cool because that gets people thinking about actually it's not just about doing the job, and again, you can take this, you can roll this up at anywhere, with your friends, in life, whatever, but going back to work, it gets your team thinking like how can I improve myself, how can I improve the business, how can I improve that relationship, how can I improve productivity? And I think that's quite a good value, I think, to have.
Wayne Brophy:And then the other one and I come back to what you asked me earlier on what makes me angry is just effort, and it's the thing I go on with my kids about all the time. So my daughter just finished her GCSEs and I said she was a bit worried about going into as much as more children are. And I said do you know what? As long as you try, it doesn't matter If you put in your effort. I said do you know what? You will know whether you have or you haven't, and you've got to look for that and that's really important for you. So just give it 100% and whatever the result is, it doesn't matter Because as long as you tried and I think effort is such an important thing and again, going back to my own business, the thing that annoys me more than anything else is when people don't put effort in.
Wayne Brophy:But actually, when I see people really trying to do something and really wanting to improve, it's brilliant. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's why I love running my own business. I'm working with people today and I'm instilling that good behaviors and ethics and values into people and it's great to see and I can always see it in my business. It's interesting because someone will join. We've got two brand new starters today and within three or four weeks of joining our business probably even less than that they'll be using words that I use. They'll be using words that we're using in the business. They'll be talking to the clients about going the extra mile. They'll be talking to the clients about confident but arrogant, personally, not professional, which are the things that we talk about all the time in our business.
David O'Hearns:Yeah, brilliant. I mean I say to my kids they know the phrase. Now I say the more you do, the better you get, and I can't imagine that wouldn't really apply to If you don't know a language and you keep doing it every day, guess what? You'll know a language better than the day before. So, the more you do, the better you'll get. You might get to a cap point. You know we both play football. We captor a certain level, didn't we?
Wayne Brophy:That's more ability than effort. I still try. It's not a good decision.
David O'Hearns:You try to get better and better. Anyway, just to wrap up, then did it get the job?
Wayne Brophy:Did you get a job? What job? You've come in a job you want, dave, you're in, you're hired, brilliant, brilliant.
David O'Hearns:So there's a lot of way for your time and giving us the insight to your personal values, why you set up the business and how they apply to your business Still 18 years on, which is fantastic. Yeah, really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, mate.
Wayne Brophy:Yeah, no worries at all, and a pleasure doing this with you, dave, you know I'm a big fan of yours. I love your business to death. And also just a shout out to you as well, really for any listeners on this podcast. We've worked with you for a long time. Part of my journey and how my business has kind of evolved is then to you and your team. Our brand has evolved and the work that you've done behind the scenes to help me understand that and be articulating my brand and help me take that to market and help me project that to my summer for candidates and clients, and where we are today. A lot of that won't be done. They won't be able to do that without the support of you. So I credit where credit is due. You've done good work behind the scenes for our business and, yeah, top man, as always. So I appreciate your time today. Thanks for letting me be part of this podcast. Have a good evening.
David O'Hearns:Thanks for that, wayne. Nice words. Luckily it's a podcast. Could people see me blushing? Yeah, I thought it was just you.
Wayne Brophy:You're a tanned Dave.
David O'Hearns:Thanks a lot, really appreciate it. I'll speak to you soon.
Wayne Brophy:No worries, take care, see you later. Bye.
David O'Hearns:Thanks for joining us on today's episode. Make sure you're following so you don't miss the next one. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. It's David O'Hernes. I'm always up for a chat. For now, that's branding done. I'll see you next time.
